Oh how I feel for this man! What torment he has endured just to fix his TV aerial! He must have asked himself a hundred times whether it was all worthwhile, given the crap that’s on the telly these days.

I’ll try to reconstruct the angst-ridden events that led to the rooftop absurdity you see before you.

A trip to the DIY shed. Items purchased were the aerial you see here, plus a short right- angle mast and a little bracket. The latter is for loft use really, but some of the sheds sell them without mentioning this limitation.

The little bracket was fixed to the chimneystack. You can see it. Note that the first attempt was with woodscrews and little plastic plugs, but then a coach bolt and a big plug were added. The right-angle mast and the aerial were fitted.

Reception was poor. It would be, quite obviously, because the location is screened from the transmitter, and a wideband aerial isn’t likely to work half as well as a grouped one, especially when it’s aligned without test equipment.

It was ‘obvious’ to our hero that the aerial need to be ‘on a tall pole’. The tall pole was duly purchased (at an eye watering price I might add) from the DIY shed. How to fix a straight pole to a bracket that needs a right-angled one? Easy! Just tape the new pole and the old one together! The whole thing was fixed into the little bracket. The cable was extended, but you can’t tell how it was jointed. Not in a nice way, I’d guess.

The whole thing fell over in a gentle breeze. There’s no way you can get these brackets to hold something 6ft tall.

Back to the DIY shed. By this time our hero would be on first name terms with the staff, who would help him select a 6” fasca bracket – the sort of thing that might be suitable for a small aerial on a 3ft mast.

By now our man was losing it a bit. The attempt to fix the fascia bracket was pathetic, with woodscrews and plugs instead of anchor bolts. The mast was fixed in the bracket, and there it will stay until there’s a strong wind. The mast passes between the aerial elements and the cable hangs loose. The old chimney bracket remains in place because next door’s lashing wire has rusted away, and our man’s wire is supporting their aerial. One screw has been left half screwed in. . . ohh err . . .spooky or what! Remember, this man has been sorely tried by his TV aerial installing nightmare, and we don’t know what relationship issues were hanging on the outcome of this DIY endeavour. Was he attempting to tighten that screw when he suddenly realised the futility of the whole exercise? In his demoralised state, did that lead on to thoughts about the way his marriage was going sour, the fact that his kids despised him (“Other people’s dads can do DIY”) in fact the futility of his entire life, and then, ultimately, that of the whole of human existence?